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The Final Mixdown- A Guide from Professional Mastering Engineer

“Garbage in, garbage out” is one of the common quotations of the mastering engineers. The source material quality that is being used determines the quality of the final product that comes as a result. Most of the clients do not have any problem in following the simple preparation procedures, but they usually do not reach out further too much. Once the sound mix feels good to them, they can get it done. Generally, there are high levels of refinement that are paying to high levels of dividends.

Mastering and mixing are two important aspects of sound engineering. In the earlier days, both these procedures are not taken into too much consideration. But, now the musicians have realized their importance and what role they play in bringing the best sound that is good to hear. These techniques also remove the bad sound from the tracks and make it more audible. The musicians, band members or the solo singers now send their raw music files to the professional music mastering engineer through online for polishing the tracks and mastering.

Here are Some of the Points that are Given by the Professional Engineer for the Final Mixdown-

1. Choose the Reference-

First, you should find a major label track that is having the perfect tonal balance that you are looking for. You should find the ideal track that has not totally decimated in the process of audio mastering; as you will be comparing it will be the un-mastered tracks. This step is very important while making the final mixdown.

2. Load in the Tracks-

Ok, I may assume that you have already sorted all the sound tracks for the release as the stereo 24 bit, higher than it has or may be AIFF files, without any processing in the master bus. These tracks peak under 0 dB. If they hit the 0 dB, this means that they are clipped. The more lowering the gain on the master bus by 6 decibels, you can again try it. Once, you are getting the clear mixdowns, improve your DAW and then put each of them on different channels.

3. Trim Each of the Tracks with Clip-

Most of the professional mastering engineer uses the loudest section of each track as the standard in the entire mixing. In almost all the cases, this indicates trimming al the tracks to about 15 seconds or more of the chorus track. Make sure to a solo individual channel before you are hitting the play so that it is not affecting your ears. May be you can turn down the reference track by the 12 dB as it is already mastered.

4. Match the Volumes-

You can bounce between the reference and the mixdown, this is one by adjusting the sound volume levels as long everything matches. Make sure that you are gaining the adjustment at the very clip level, mainly not on the channel so that you are not losing the settings.

These are some of the steps, which lead to final mixdown of the sound tracks at a studio.

In order to acquire a strong footing in the music industry, a newbie artist must try to gather as much information as he can on the extensive procedure of audio production. He can either take help from the established professionals or read the concepts available on the Internet and magazines.

The process of music production varies from one person to another. There is no definite method that an individual could use to fabricate a track or an entire album. These situations actually require years of experience and experimentation.

The amateur musicians would surely get intimidated by the all-encompassing nature of the song creation process. For their benefit, I am going to break the entire procedure of music production into eight definite steps and describe each of them in details. Steps of Music ProductionStarting from fabrication of the lyrics to indulging in mixing and mastering services, the below-mentioned points cover all the substantial facets of audio production. Songwriting- The for…

DDP files are user for sending a DVD or CD to the manufacturer. It helps audio engineers to set all the parameters for CD resealing. These parameters include maintaining the same gap between two tracks, crossfader and more. Overall, it is fair to say DDP files allow engineers to control all the guidelines for a CD release.

Previously the story was completely different with CD mastering. The mastering engineers sent the mastered file to the CD manufacturer. They used to glass master from the original CD for creating copies. Many of the engineers and manufacturers still use this technique because it is simple to do. But the approach has disadvantages also. If the main copy (original CD master) contains any error that will be also copied in the manufactured DVDs and CDs as well. That is why most of the professional mixing and mastering engineers prefers DDP mastering. This kind of file format has the ability to prevent any type of errors from taking place in the final product.